Caroline Simpson Collection

Charles Duval's pet kangaroo in the lower garden at Brooksby, Ocean Avenue, Double Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, 1922 / Harold Cazneaux

Cazneaux, Harold, 1878-1953.

[1922]

1 photoprint : b & w ; 17.8 x 24.3 cm (image) 21.5 x 28.5 cm (card mount)

Unsigned. Captioned in biro on verso of image: “Brooksby” 1922 / Lower Garden Captioned in biro on verso of mount: 1922 / Brooksby / Lower Garden & / Kangaroo

Brooksby (Double Bay, N.S.W.)
gardens
kangaroos
rustic woodwork
Strelitzia nicolai

Brooksby collection

Part of a collection of 14 photographs taken by Sydney's premier society photographer Harold Cazneaux of a house named Brooksby in Ocean Avenue, Double Bay, plus 1 photograph by Cazneaux of another house in Ocean Avenue named Deepdene. The collection was purchased from a Sydney antiquarian bookdealer in 1992. The photographs are mounted on card and all but three are signed Cazneaux on the mount below the image lower right.
The Brooksby photographs are dated 1922. At that time, according to Sands' Sydney Directories, the house was in the occupation of pastoralist Charles William Little (1847-1934), his wife Minnie Mary (nee Morgan, 1867-1934) and their adult children. Their youngest daughter Mollie married from Brooksby in April 1922. She was well known in Sydney social circles as the favourite dancing partner of the Prince of Wales during his visit to Sydney in 1920.
The internal evidence of the photographs suggest, however, that the photographs do not relate to the Little family's residence at Brooksby. All 15 photographs have been captioned in biro below the image, or on the verso of the image or on the verso of the mount, sometimes on all three. The captions, including the date, appear to have been added long after the photographs were taken, possibly by Mrs Helen Agnes Duval (1885-1972) who lived at Brooksby with her husband Charles Allen Duval (1875-1937) and son Robert Andrew Duval from around 1923 until the late 1930s. After the death of Charles Duval in 1937 and Robert Duval's marriage in 1939 Helen Duval moved to Deepdene, at that time the home of her widowed sister Mrs Barbara Mary Porter (1874-1948) and her niece Dorothy Marie Porter (1906-1992).

Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection ; CSL&RC PIC 1992/1

You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Museums of History NSW to request permission.

Picture

56220